Gaslighting Myself

For a long time, I thought gaslighting was something someone else did to you.

A manipulative tactic.

A bad actor.

A malicious intent.

What I didn’t realize is that somewhere along the way, I learned how to do it to myself.

Quietly.

Convincingly.

With language that sounded like maturity and compassion and growth.

It didn’t sound like cruelty.

It sounded like reason.

I gaslit myself when something didn’t feel right and my first instinct wasn’t to listen — it was to explain.

He’s just busy.

It’s a stressful season.

This isn’t personal.

He is going through a hard time.

Even when the pattern repeated.

Even when my body tensed before my mind caught up.

Even when the same confusion showed up again and again.

I treated patterns like exceptions and called it grace.

I gaslit myself when I felt hurt and immediately questioned the validity of my reaction.

I’m too sensitive.

That's my trauma speaking.

Other people wouldn’t be bothered by this.

I need to get thicker skin.

Instead of asking, Why did that land the way it did?

I asked, What’s wrong with me for feeling this way?

I didn’t realize how often I turned my own emotions into something that needed to be corrected.

I gaslit myself by over-understanding.

I could see every angle.

I could articulate every possible motivation.

I could explain behavior in ways that made it seem reasonable, complex, human.

And all of that understanding slowly replaced something simpler and truer:

This hurts.

This doesn’t feel safe.

This costs me something every time.

Understanding became a way to avoid reckoning.

I gaslit myself when I rewrote my own memory in real time.

Maybe it didn’t happen like that.

Maybe I misunderstood.

Maybe I’m remembering it wrong.

I started doubting my recall only in one place, one relationship, one dynamic.

That should have told me something.

Healthy environments don’t make you question your grip on reality.

I gaslit myself when I accepted things I would never encourage anyone I love to accept.

If a friend had told me the same story, I would have known immediately what I thought.

But when it was my life, I called it complicated.

That word covered a lot of ground.

I gaslit myself by confusing endurance with growth.

I told myself I was learning patience.

Practicing compassion.

Doing deep inner work.

But the lesson never ended.

The conditions never changed.

And I was always the one adjusting.

Growth expands you.

Endurance just teaches you how to live smaller.

The hardest part to admit is this:

I wasn’t being gaslit because I was weak.

I was gaslighting myself because I was trying to belong,

to preserve connection,

to make something work that mattered to me.

I didn’t know I was gaslighting myself while it was happening.

I didn’t have language for it.

I didn’t recognize it as a dynamic.

I didn’t see him doing it,

and I certainly didn’t see myself participating in it.

I thought I was being loving.

Patient.

Self-aware.

I thought I was doing the mature thing by staying grounded,

giving the benefit of the doubt,

and working through discomfort instead of running from it.

Nothing about it felt like deception.

It felt like effort.

I only saw it after my lived reality exploded.

After the story I had been holding collapsed all at once.

After too many pieces no longer fit together.

After there was no way to explain, contextualize, or soften what I experienced.

That’s when the fog lifted.

Not because I finally understood —but because there was no longer anywhere left to stand that required me to doubt myself.

Looking back, I can see how both things were true at the same time:

He was distorting reality.

And I was translating my own knowing into something more survivable.

Not because I was weak.

But because I was inside it.

Self-gaslighting doesn’t announce itself.

It doesn’t feel like betrayal.

It feels like love, hope, loyalty, and the belief that if you just stay steady long enough, everything will be okay.

What I know now is simple.

When your inner voice sounds more like a mediator than a witness,

when you keep adjusting your own truth so things can keep working,

it’s not a failure of insight.

It’s a moment worth pausing.

Not to accuse.

Not to blow anything up.

Just to notice what you might be explaining away.

Self-gaslighting isn’t lying to yourself.

It’s slowly learning not to listen to your intuition,

and calling that wisdom.

And sometimes, the most self-respecting thing you can do

is stop explaining

and let what you feel

be what it is.